For a historical perspective about this great gift of the growing harmony between the Bible and science, it is important to understand trends of western thought regarding scientific understanding. A practical definition for “science” is an attempt to systemize human knowledge and understanding, especially knowledge based on observation and experimentation (this approach was called natural philosophy instead of science up until the mid-1800s). Using this practical definition, science can be traced back to early civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia where they had early forms of understanding about astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. This approach was enhanced by ancient Greeks like Thales, Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras. The next large step in a western scientific approach came in the 1400s to 1600s with scientists like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Most societies throughout these times had a strong belief in some type of supernatural deities. So, while this scientific approach used human reasoning to try to explain how the natural world worked on its own, these explanations usually left room for the supernatural deities to be influential in the universe and in our lives as well.

As this scientific approach became more and more successful, however, there was a growing sense that supernatural deities may not be needed for meaningful explanations of how nature worked. For example, in the early 1700s, Isaac Newton had remarked that God would be needed to intervene in the universe from time to time to keep our solar system stable. By the early 1800s, another accomplished scientist named Pierre-Simon Laplace had written several books precisely explaining the movement of planets. When asked by the French emperor Napoleon why Laplace’s books did not mention God, the reply of Laplace was to the effect that he did not need the hypothesis that Newton had made for God’s intervention. This statement of Laplace about not needing God to explain science is descriptive of the philosophical approach of methodological naturalism, which restricts scientific explanations to natural causes and events and excludes supernatural or divine explanations.

During the 1800s and 1900s the continued success of science along with additional economic, political, philosophical, and other factors led numerous scientists, philosophers, revolutionaries, and other influential people to move beyond methodological naturalism to what has been called pure naturalism (or scientism). Pure naturalism is the philosophical view that says that the natural world is all that really exists. This means that pure naturalism denies the existence of any supernatural or spiritual realm, entities, or forces. Most scientific organizations have been careful to promote methodological naturalism and not pure naturalism. However, in today’s world many influential people in all walks of society continue to promote a belief system based on pure naturalism. For example, a Wikipedia article on atheists lists hundreds of influential scientists and technologists, most of whom would probably hold to a philosophy of pure naturalism. 

From this brief overview covering the last few centuries of western thought, it becomes easy to see how significant a growing harmony between the Bible and science would be. It would seem to be just a matter of time before this growing evidence of the harmony between the Bible and science will be recognized by more and more people, bearing the fruit that our Creator meant His truths to bring.